Social engineering is the art of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. While similar to a confidence trick or simple fraud, the term typically applies to trickery for information gathering or computer system access and in most cases the attacker never comes face-to-face with the victim.

If you need someone to join you or your group or help you, and they are not already loyal or committed to your target, make them feel like their actions will directly affect the outcome of the situation, and they are the only person that is skilled enough for you to use. Making them believe their actions directly affect the outcome allows their ego to take credit for group successes, while blaming failures on the general group, instead of themselves.

If you need to get into a building, dress as a professional or repair person. Most people will just let someone into the building if he is dressed as an HVAC repair guy and says he needs to replace the thermostat on floor 12.

If you do not need to pretend to be a part of a stereotypical subculture to play your role, pretend to be the subculture of the target. A good social engineer should be well versed in most major cultures they will encounter. Learn about popular music, art, tv, SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS LEARN ABOUT WHAT IS GOING ON IN SPORTS THIS WILL COME IN HANDY, and anything like that. If he identifies with you then you don't need to earn his trust, it will be a given.

If the person is pretentious, make your arguments intellectual, imply that the enemy, or the person you want them to be against, is a stupid redneck. If they are fat, ugly, and insecure, imply the enemy is a hipster/scenester/whatever attractive people dress like to attract the opposite sex. If they identify with normality and being an "average joe" make a common sense argument. If they are stupid or identify with religion or nationalism, make your argument based on cultural biases, religion, nationality. Always imply that the enemy is somehow related to other things they don't like. If they dislike Muslims, pointing out Obama's Kenyan heritage and Muslim father would lead them to the conclusion that he is undesirable. Don't tell them what to think, use biased facts and statements to lead them to conclude on their own that your enemy is their enemy.

Here is an ok example I just threw together, using anti-Obama propaganda.:

To appeal to intellectuals: Obama's Keynesian economic policies take money from productive sectors of the economy and just dump them into the hands of spenders, thus recreating a fraction of jobs that would have existed anyway with the investment of the original sectors from whom the money was taxed was originally taken. This is what happens when a stagnant congress bends to the demands of a bunch of loudmouth rednecks cause "AMERICA FREEDUM GUNNA GO TO MEXICANS IF WE DON'T KILL BROWN PEOPL!!!1!!"Isn't it time we stopped letting ignorance and shouting dictate American policy?

To appeal to average joes: As Americans, we are responsible for maintaining the freedom of America. Our soldiers are still fighting the good fight, even though Obama promised to have them home over a year ago. Each American has the ability to directly affect the outcome of the struggle against tyranny. The president has shown time and time again that he has no interest in keeping America safe. Do we really need a president that panders to terrorists and corrupt big business lobbyists, destroys the free market to implement his liberal agenda, claimed that as president he would ensure the legalization of hard drugs for anyone over 17, and claims that America is less christian now than any country in North America?

To appeal to stupid/religious/nationalist people: Barack Hussein Obama has pardoned over 241 terrorist combatants in the last two years, while sending troops near the Iranian border to protect his good friend, the president of Iran, from any of the fighting. He has eliminated all religious symbols from the white house, including a cross put there in 1866 that was of considerable historical significance. While leaving America's borders open to attacks, he has allowed drug smugglers and criminals in to sell our children drugs.

All of the "facts" are completely made up. There is no valid data of any kind in any of those examples. In real life I would make sure the "facts" were less verifiable, or loosely based in reality. The less you have to lie the better. A genuinely hard target is one who doubts you. He will look up everything you say and put it through objective analysis. Try to choose the weaker minded person, if you can. Avoid stubborn people.

Confidence is key. If you look confident and act as if it were an everyday task, even bored in some cases, all the easier.

Here's one of my personal everyday SEs:In class, the teacher stamps our homework. Instead of doing the homework, like a good student, I write the header/assignment on the top of the paper then wait for the teacher to get close. I start to ruffle through my papers, as if caught off guard, throw my assignment sheet (lists the assignments) on top of my homework (covering the whole sheet except header) and then take a deep breath as she looks down as if I am finally relaxing. It works 100% of the time. Plus I'm nice to my teachers so it's easier to get away with it.

The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty; it's merely twice as big as it needs to be.

The biggest thing is to just be cool, act like you know what you're doing. Like you said Arameus, you could dress up or make it seem like you're just another dude that belongs. And as fasshizzlepop said, confidence is an important factor. Being nervous can be suspicious.

fashizzlepop wrote:Confidence is key. If you look confident and act as if it were an everyday task, even bored in some cases, all the easier.

Here's one of my personal everyday SEs:In class, the teacher stamps our homework. Instead of doing the homework, like a good student, I write the header/assignment on the top of the paper then wait for the teacher to get close. I start to ruffle through my papers, as if caught off guard, throw my assignment sheet (lists the assignments) on top of my homework (covering the whole sheet except header) and then take a deep breath as she looks down as if I am finally relaxing. It works 100% of the time. Plus I'm nice to my teachers so it's easier to get away with it.

fashizzlepop wrote:Confidence is key. If you look confident and act as if it were an everyday task, even bored in some cases, all the easier.

Here's one of my personal everyday SEs:In class, the teacher stamps our homework. Instead of doing the homework, like a good student, I write the header/assignment on the top of the paper then wait for the teacher to get close. I start to ruffle through my papers, as if caught off guard, throw my assignment sheet (lists the assignments) on top of my homework (covering the whole sheet except header) and then take a deep breath as she looks down as if I am finally relaxing. It works 100% of the time. Plus I'm nice to my teachers so it's easier to get away with it.

That's exactly what I do, minus the deep breath part.

I could never get away with that in a million years :/, our homework is scrutinized.

It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votesinsomaniacal.blog.com

I could never get away with that in a million years :/, our homework is scrutinized.[/quote]I will go as far as throwing down fake answers, scribbles, and doodles so it looks like my page is filled up with work or at least an attempt, flash it briefly, then file it into a bunch of papers like I'm trying to be "organized" and impatient.

Dwere (David)

Goatboy wrote:

Dwere wrote:I'm not one to start some branch of religion though. Not my thing.

Dwere134 wrote:I will go as far as throwing down fake answers, scribbles, and doodles so it looks like my page is filled up with work or at least an attempt, flash it briefly, then file it into a bunch of papers like I'm trying to be "organized" and impatient.

Scrutinized as in collected, and a collection of random problems graded. (In math, at least, the only class where I have a sizable amount of homework anyway). So writing a bunch of random answers and doodles would just get a slick "SEE ME" on my paper instead of a usual mark.

It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votesinsomaniacal.blog.com

insomaniacal wrote:Scrutinized as in collected, and a collection of random problems graded. (In math, at least, the only class where I have a sizable amount of homework anyway). So writing a bunch of random answers and doodles would just get a slick "SEE ME" on my paper instead of a usual mark.

Well you must be stuck with one of those silly teachers who thinks they can make a difference to kids by making them DO work. You sir, are unfortunate. I'm sorry.

Dwere (David)

Goatboy wrote:

Dwere wrote:I'm not one to start some branch of religion though. Not my thing.

Dwere134 wrote:Well you must be stuck with one of those silly teachers who thinks they can make a difference to kids by making them DO work. You sir, are unfortunate. I'm sorry.

Not at all, he's actually a pretty cool guy. The pace of the course is such that if you don't do the work, you'll inevitably fall behind. For most other classes I would agree. Writing a million vocab words won't make you smarter, but the only way to truly master any concept in math is to actually do it. So although it can be annoying at times, it's ultimately for the best.

It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votesinsomaniacal.blog.com

well, it's easy to manipulate teachers. Make it look like you did it. The problem with that is, you can do that all quarter but then come finals time, you are the person who sits at there test going, " I do not know one word on this test". Besides every class I have homework is like 10% of my overall grade :l

But as for a good tip, always make sure to know your victim well and be well scripted. People have a bad habit of making it up as they go because they feel that confident. It's the same in real life, all you need to do is Listen. If it's an online encounter, read what they post or read what they are saying over a chat. Be a sponge and take in their views, but make sure to find a common enemy. So then you can bring it up, and have something to share on. "Ya nick is on a total power abuse". Just always be careful who you share info around, cause you never know...Nick Jr. might be listening and call nick over. Which then you get screwed, and blow your whole mission.

Funniest thing to do with people:Act like a Girl.

I know its gonna sound gay, and "shemale"ish. But trust me, the best way to get close to a guy is to be a girl. There was this old gaming server I played on, and one of the owners would always promote these "girls" who were actually me and my friends, to administrator or moderator positions for free. See even when he got more suspicious, photoshop is easy. People might do the "Go on webcam thing", which you can obviously never do. So a while back I had a girl take a picture with a post it note saying "<3". All I did was put that into photoshop and put whatever text they asked for... Sad but simple enough to win anybodies trust.